Thursday, 21 May 2015

Everyone wants to know how I made my chicken curry the other day. It was soooo delicious and tasted better then a curry from the Chinese. It was a tad spicy for my mam so next time I will add less curry powder and cumin. It took about and hour to cook and is free on extra easy :)

The Ingredients-

3 Chicken breasts chopped into chunks

1 cup of brown rice

5 sweet peppers finely chopped

1 cup of frozen peas

200 g mushrooms chopped thickly

2 onions sliced thickly

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

2 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp cumin

5 tbsp Fat free fromage frais

The Method-
I chopped up all the veg and fried it in a pan in fry light. I also fried the chicken in garlic in a separate pan. Once the veg and chicken where fully cooked I added them to a large sauce pan. I then mixed them together and added the tin of chopped tomatoes along with some slimmed milk, curry powder and cumin. I let that simmer and mixed all the ingredients together. Once the mixture was simmering I boiled the brown rice (it takes 30-40 mins to cook) Once the curry was cooked I added in the fromage frais. This is when it started to really look and taste like an amazing curry. Once the rice was boiled I strained it and served it up a broghie. These can be bought in Tesco and are like a giant flavourless prawn cracker haha. They are only 1 syn each.

It was so simple and so delicious. I had enough left over for 2 more dinners. This meal is perfect for cooking up and freezing for days when you are too busy or tired to cook. What I always do is separate each portion into tupperware and freeze them. The night before I take it out of the freezer and there is zero preparation the following day.

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

I am so excited to share this recipe with you all, I made these breakfast muffins yesterday and had them this morning. They are so tasty and fun to make. I needed a change in my breakfast routine as I was getting very bored. As promised in last weeks post I am going to try and be more adventurous with my food to keep it interesting.

Lets get straight into the ingredients.

YOU WILL NEED -

4 or 5 Large eggs

5 lean bacon medallions

200 g of mushrooms finely chopped

A handful of spinach

A fairy cake tray

Fry light 1 cal spray

METHOD-

Preheat oven to 180/160 fan/gas mark 4

Dice the mushrooms and bacon and fry up.

Beat eggs together

Grease the paper holders with fry light, I would recommend using silicone cases instead of paper.

Add mushrooms and bacon to the tins

Pour eggs over the filling

Top with spinach

Cook for 30mins or until golden brown

Enjoy as part of your breakfast or snack on these when you get hungry. They are even nice cold :) Oh and they are SYN FREE :)

Snap me pictures of your muffins, be adventurous and add what ever filling you fancy

With a 1.5lb loss this week (woohoo) and only 2lb until I hit target, this post is all about how I'm going to stay on track and get to my goal. If you've been following by journey and blog posts for a while you'll know I changed my target last month. I don't want to lose as much as I first thought. I am happy in my skin now and feel like if I went to 10stone I'd be too skinny. I am a curve woman and want to keep my shape but tone up and get fit in the process. My new target is 11 stone and I'm in reaching distance of it now!

This last week I was ok and stuck to plan most days. If you follow me on snapchat you'll know the terrible craving I had for a battered sausage and chips last week!!! I had to give in to it or else it would have driven me insane! I also pigged out on crisps and dip in my friend Denise's on Sunday. For the most part I was good but I did have some slip ups. I exercised about 4 times last week and I think that helped with the loss this week.

Enough about last week, lets focus on week 18 and what I'm going to do to stay on track and hopefully ( fingers crossed) reach my target next week. This week is going to be a tricky one as I have two events, a communion and a SoSueMe workshop planned. These are all massive risks and I need to be in the right frame of mind before hand and be prepared.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon cooking and preparing meals for the coming week. Our fridge is stocked with healthy free food and I have a big pot of speed soup to keep me going all week.

In class this morning there where a lot of disappointed and disheartened people. One thing to remember is that the week is over, the past is in the past and not to dwell on it for feel guilty for yesterdays mistakes. The best thing to do is start fresh everyday and try be as good and as motivated as possible. It's all about making the right choices, if not the right choice then the best possible choice you can make in that situation. For example, yesterday all I wanted with my cuppa tea in the evening was a bar of chocolate. I asked Chris had he any and he produced a little dark chocolate bar from Aldi. I looked up the syn value and it was worth 7syns. I hadn't thought much about it and then thought to myself is this tiny bar really worth the 7 syns??? I came to the conclusion that no, it wasn't. The hardest thing I had to do this week was put that bar back in the press and walk away. It killed me but it was the right choice. The best thing I can advise is to take ever meal and ever snack as it comes, be aware of exactly what is in it and think to yourself, is it worth it? If your answer is no then leave it behind. You will thank yourself on weigh in day :)

This week I am going to try my hardest to stay on plan, I am going to exercise regularly and make better choices when it comes to snacking or eating out. I really want that 2lb loss, lets see if I can do it. If not, there's always next week. Remember not to be too hard of yourself and don't judge yourself. This journey is a learning curve and we need to take baby steps.

I hope this post helped in some way and encourages you to get back in the game. I'll have two posts to follow of the delicious speed soup and breakfast muffins I made yesterday. Stay tuned for them!

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

You will most likely have seen this picture I shared yesterday of my latest progress picture. It reached over 100K people ahhhhh what the hell!!!!

Anyway, as it was my birthday last weekend I completely fell off the SW bus and went wild. I ate so much crap (but delicious crap haha) I was dreading my weigh in this morning. UP 2.5lb!!!! But I thought to myself, it's not the end of the world, you had an amazing week, enjoyed every bite of cheese covered goodness and every cocktail.

On top of my birthday, I also had my bestie finally come home from her 2 years stint in Australia (the Eddie Rocket ritual was a must) and a number of events to attend, where they force tropical cocktails, beautiful cupcakes and sweets down my throat! No, I know, no excuses! No one forced me into it but I wanted to enjoy it all and it just goes to show that I can't overindulge like that. My body doesn't cope with bad crappy junk food. It just doesn't like it as much as my taste buds do!

To be honest I do feel sluggish and have no energy and I haven't been sleeping right the last couple of nights. That was an extremely long intro.

Long story short, I ate crap and gained weight haha.

So after my class today, and the amazing feedback and support I received from all of you, I had an idea to share my overall weight loss since last summer and compare it to the weight gain I had this week. I wanted to share with you that a little gain is ok, don't beat yourself up. Look at the bigger picture and learn from your mistakes. Every day is a second chance.

***** WARNING VEGETARIANS LOOK AWAY NOW*****

I asked a butcher to weigh out just how much I have lost in the year and compare it to the 2.5lb gain I had this week. He looked at me like I had ten heads and then found it hard to find enough meat to match what I had lost haha. He also said he'd never done anything like this in his life before!!!Welcome to the mad mind of FacesByGrace!!!!

So in June last year I weighed a whopping 14 stone 4lb. I lied when my mam asked me if I had gained weight after my holiday. I was too embarrassed to admit I had. I was at my all time heaviest of 201.6lb!!!!!! Last week I got down to 155.4lb which meant I had lost 46.2lb!!!!!! Bare in mind I am tall, 5;6 and my excuse was I weigh heavy because my heart is so full of love!!! hahaha that is probably the cheesiest thing I will admitt to

Here is a look at what 46 pound looks like! Shocking isn't it!!!

Here is the 2.5 pounds I gained today!

In the grand scheme of things it wasn't a huge gain but it's the last cheat week I will have for a long time. I'm back on it and going to try cook more adventurous, clean healthy meals, lead an extremely active lifestyle and just be happy and healthy!

I hope this post is helpful and inspires those of you who want to do it, to stop thinking and start doing. Nothing tastes as good as happy and healthy feels :)

Monday, 4 May 2015

Todays post is a little bit different from my normal happy positive posts. As most of you will know I suffer from anxiety and have done so all my life. I have discussed this on my YouTube channel and will link a playlist here where you can watch all three videos.

Since my last bad patch with anxiety I haven't had many bad days.... Until this week. It's common knowledge that alcohol is a depressant and causes "The Fear" for many of us. For someone who suffers with generalised anxiety this feeling of fear is amplified to the max the day after I have been drinking. It doesn't necessarily mean I have been out drinking from one end of the day to the other, it could be a casual few drinks and I still feel severely anxious the following day. This anxiousness doesn't come from totally blacking out the night before, or thinking I have done something terribly wrong, it is brought on by my over active mind, and leads me to feel paranoid & vulnerable and more often then not leads to a panic attack.

In the last year, as i've become more aware of my disorder and educated myself on anxiety, i've begun to realise what is actually happening to me when I have "The Fear".

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE-
For me, "The Fear" starts the same way as it does for everyone else, general hangover, tiredness and worrying about what I may have done the previous night. It soon escalates to far more irrational and dark thoughts, for example my slight headache transforms into a potentially life threatening brain tumour within the space of about three minutes!!! As silly as that might sound, it's the only way I can put into words just how ridiculous my thoughts are when i'm feeling like this. I start to genuinely believe what i'm thinking and I end up jumping from one ridiculous thought to the next without even realising it. Before I know it, i'm so wrapped up in these thoughts, i'm 5 minutes into a full blown panic attack. This is usually around the time when I stop everything and look to Chris for help. He has a great way of talking me down and making me understand just what it is I am going through.

HOW I DEAL WITH IT-
The most important thing for me to pull myself out of these panic attacks is to talk it out, take deep breathes and focus on living in the moment (not in my head). This is easier said than done, but it takes practice. I try to practice mindfulness as much as I can and meditate a lot when I am feeling overwhelmed. There is a particular sleep meditation I like to listen to when I am finding it hard to fall asleep. I will link it here. It sounds a bit cringey at the start but the more you listen to it and focus, the easier it becomes. Talking to Chris really helps to make me see sense and the reassurance from him, and others makes me feel that what i'm going through is all in my head. The mind is so powerful and can make you believe and even feel that what's going on in your head is true.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT
I have learnt that I am focusing on the negative thoughts in my mind, some of which are completely fabricated and untrue, rather than living in the present moment. Chris always reminds me that "You are not your thoughts & your thoughts are not you!". I now know that it's normal to feel this way but because i'm an anxious person, the feeling of "The Fear" is amplified.

So now I know that I need to prepare myself for these days. If I know i'm going out for drinks i'll remind myself how bad it feels the next day and be more responsible. It's not that I ever get so drunk that I cant remember, its that my mind wanders and makes me believe I have done and said more than I actually have.

I have now come to terms with the fact that this is who I am and that's ok. Its normal to feel this way and I just need to make sure I am not judging myself because of it. I hope some of you can relate to this and maybe it can help you realise what you are feeling may be anxiety brought on my alcohol.